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The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the
Intellectual against the sensible: better for the soul to dwell
in the Intellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under
compulsion to participate in the sense-realm also. There is no
grievance in its not being, through and through, the highest; it
holds mid-rank among the authentic existences, being of divine
station but at the lowest extreme of the Intellectual and
skirting the sense-known nature; thus, while it communicates to
this realm something of its own store, it absorbs in turn
whenever- instead of employing in its government only its
safeguarded phase- it plunges in an excessive zeal to the very
midst of its chosen sphere; then it abandons its status as whole
soul with whole soul, though even thus it is always able to
recover itself by turning to account the experience of what it
has seen and suffered here, learning, so, the greatness of rest
in the Supreme, and more clearly discerning the finer things by
comparison with what is almost their direct antithesis. Where the
faculty is incapable of knowing without contact, the experience
of evil brings the dearer perception of Good.
The outgoing that takes place in the Intellectual-Principle is a
descent to its own downward ultimate: it cannot be a movement to
the transcendent; operating necessarily outwards from itself,
wherein it may not stay inclosed, the need and law of Nature
bring it to its extreme term, to soul- to which it entrusts all
the later stages of being while itself turns back on its course.
The soul's operation is similar: its next lower act is this
universe: its immediate higher is the contemplation of the
Authentic Existences. To individual souls such divine operation
takes place only at one of their phases and by a temporal process
when from the lower in which they reside they turn towards the
noblest; but that soul, which we know as the All-Soul, has never
entered the lower activity, but, immune from evil, has the
property of knowing its lower by inspection, while it still
cleaves continuously to the beings above itself; thus its double
task becomes possible; it takes thence and, since as soul it
cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither.
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